As They Are, as They Were, as They Will Be
by Kintaraheart
Summary: Eight years after the death of his father, Giizheg finally tells his mother how he really died.
1. Chapter 1

**This story will be in three parts, each with two chapters, so a total of six in the end. I wanted to elaborate on Giizheg's life more since he plays important rolls in a few of my other stories. I hope you enjoy it.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Warcraft universe except for my own characters.**

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Part One: As they Are

Chapter One

Tirisfal is never warm, but today the air holds a peculiar chill to it as Giizheg walks along the path of stones that lead to his mother's door. Her house is a little, dilapidated, building on the outskirts of Brill, a converted storage shed with chipping blue paint. The porch is just a set of wooden steps that sag so badly in the middle that water has collected in them permanently and moss covers every inch of the wood that isn't submerged. Both of the house's two front windows have been knocked out and are covered by thick, intricate tapestries from their old home in Quel'thalas, one of the only gifts she's allowed him to give her. The roof is a mess of holes, one of which is so large that he could climb through it if he wanted to, and the floor squeals as though it's a beast in pain every time he walks upon it.

Yet despite all this the front yard is filled with life and color. Hundreds of flowers grow all around the little house, miraculously defying the decay all around them. Peacebloom, mageroyal, kingsblood, steelbloom, blindweed, even dreamfoil and a couple of extremely rare black and purple lotuses grow all around the patchy, stone path on which he walks. Ironically, just beside the door, grows a single Arthas' Tear.

For years he's pestered her about repairs, trying to convince her to let him fix _something_. He can hardly stand to come here and see her in such a state, even if she herself _exists_ in such a state as this one. But she insists on leaving this place as it is. In regards to the ruined front steps she says that nature must take over again some day and who are they stop it. She tells him that she likes the holes her in the roof and that through them she stargazes. To the squeaking floors she only laughs.

He supposes that his optimistic nature is a gift from her and he cannot fault her for finding beauty and hope in the tragic. _She_ is tragic yet she still dresses as she did in Quel'thalas and she still reads by the light of a candle despite not needing one to see. She still writes monthly letters to him even when he is worlds or an entire dimension away and insists that they celebrate birthdays and remember those who have passed.

In fact, that is why he is here now, walking up the rickety steps to knock on her battered door. He has come to commemorate his father with her and to celebrate the great man that he was as they have every done year since his passing. It is disturbing to realise that this year will be the eighth year. It has been almost a decade and the pain has never lessened. Giizheg still sees his face in his sleep and hears his _Ann'da_ 's voice reciting prayers with him as they bless the mass grave of fallen soldiers in Icecrown just hours before his father joined them.

Finally he has reached the door and quietly he knocks. For a moment he can hear a faint shuffling from behind it before she opens it and grins at him with yellowed teeth. Despite being dead, despite the stringy hair and the hollowed cheeks, and skin covered in scabs that will never heal, she is still beautiful even now. Perhaps it's just because she is his mother and because of her importance to him she will always be beautiful, but there is something in the faint smile that always rests on her face and in the way she has somehow managed to turn those yellow eyes into something warm and inviting rather than a signal of the missing pieces of her soul that strikes him as wonderful.

Or maybe he's just delusional, because in reality this is a dead woman. His mother is dead and despite her… _undying_ … optimism, she is not the same as she once was no matter how little she changes things in an effort to keep things as they are.

Still, he grins back when he sees her and accepts her embrace as she hugs her son.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two of part one.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Warcraft universe except for my own characters.**

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Chapter Two

They sit together at the small table for a while and drink peacebloom tea and neither of them say a word. It isn't the time for talking yet, that will come when the cups are empty and the chill is driven away as much as it can be in a shack with a dozen holes in the roof.

Around the room Giizheg spies the little gifts he's brought her over the years. She rarely allows him to bring her much, scolding him even while accepting the few she _does_ allow him to give her. The tapestries hang, bright blue and silver, against the drab walls alongside a portrait of their family made shortly after he was born. A small, palm-sized portrait of Vokuro sits in a frame on the table, ever a part of the family. His mother had always refused to forget him, even though he and Giizheg had different mothers, the shared blood of their father bound them and his mother recognized that even after everything that had come to pass.

In the corner stood her reading chair and a small bookshelf. These were the only two things, besides the portraits, that she'd asked for. In life she'd loved to read and she'd sit curled in that velvet chair in the corner of the library for hours each evening. His father had been the one to teach her literacy. She'd grown up a slave and for her, reading and writing had been just another thing that belonged only to the wealthy in Lordaeron. Once she learned, she loved books and couldn't get enough of them. She read every book in their small library and would scour the mages' shelves in Silvermoon for more. Giizheg remembered that his uncle often went with her, being an archmage himself, so that no one could argue her presence.

He smiled at the memories of his own time spent there. Trips to the library with his mother, uncle, and Jaerim had been a regular occurrence. As he eyed the little shelf in the corner, he vowed to bring her some books from Dalaran and a bigger shelf to house them.

The only other things she's permitted him to bring her are a few of the smaller things from their house. A set of silver windchimes his father had crafted for her himself hangs from one of the only places on the ceiling where there isn't a hole, a map of old Azeroth is tacked onto the wall above her bed, a stained glass lantern sits on a small shelf above the tiny sink near the front door.

Finally, she sets her cup down and the sharp sound of porcelain on porcelain, however quiet, makes his ears twitch. "How is it looking?"

She asks him this question every year, because every year there's another threat. "It's… Rough," he says after a few seconds, "Jaerim and Setirion are on Argus. Jaya is there, too, along with most of the order. We've made more progress in just over a year against the Legion than we have in, well, _thousands_. Still, this threat and everything about it… I'm just so nervous. There is a lot at stake here, regardless of the progress so much is at risk."

His mother stares into the little white cup resting on its saucer as she contemplates his words. "We will overcome it," she says once she looks up again, "as we always do. Just hold on to your faith in the Light."

He smiles at that. Her words are like the tea they drink; bittersweet. Even after everything she still believes in the Light, her heart is still there even though it no longer beats. Her devotion is beautiful, but haunting, as is everything else about her now. As faithful as he is, Giizheg can see through the devotion to the desperation. Despite her strength in her undeath he knows she's clinging to it, holding on as tightly as she can. He wonders how long she'll last and his smile falters.

Silence ticks by hand in hand with the seconds, but somehow in his mother's desolate little cottage, time seems meaningless. Both this place and the woman who has claimed it are timeless now, both as battered and rotted as the other, but both existing in perpetuity. As he sits at her table, Giizheg is reminded of scouring the ancient Kaldorei ruins of Kalimdor and the odd, eerie timelessness on display as nature reclaimed the white and silver stone, shrines and towers being swallowed whole by vines but so slowly that it seems as if it's always been that way. He can't quite place the feeling to words, but the longer he sits there, the more he feels as though he's going to be swallowed, too.

He fidgets in his seat and downs the last of his tea. "Of course," he finally replies, "the Light will always prevail if only one remains faithful." Yet there's a shimmering strand of doubt, white and cold as his long hair, in his heart as he looks around them and wonders how many people prayed for salvation before they were torn apart by the plague. He cringes at the thought and for an instant he is lost again as he remembers what he's come here to do. As he glances at his mother he is reminded of his father and the terrible truth that makes his hands clench into fists in sorrow and guilt.

He comes here every year on this day and every year it is the same. For nearly a decade it has been this way. They drink tea, they talk for a while, and then they go to his father's headstone and bless the grave despite the fact that his father's body does not rest within it. This year will be different, the cycle ended and the truth unearthed and spoken into the air for the first time in eight years. He wonders and worries how his mother, who hates change despite her optimist's heart, will handle the confession that teeters on his tongue, dark and cursed as the saronite of his brother's armor.

"You're quiet this year, my son." Her voice jolts him back to the present and he attempts a smile to conceal the torment in his heart, but she sees right through him. "Giizheg, if you think you can successfully deceive me with smiles just because I am undead now, you are very much mistaken. I am still your mother, alive or otherwise, and I _know you_." Her cold fingers cover his own as they shake. "What is wrong?"

He hates to lie, it makes his mouth taste like ash, but it's not yet time to tell her. He can't just yet, he wants to savor these last moments because he knows that after the truth is told she might cast him out for his deception. She is right about him, about his deceiving smiles, how he hides behind kindness and servitude. He puts himself before others, forever the shield, to make up for the shadow that's grown within him since he was a boy.

"I… I just miss father." His words convince no one, but neither of them say anything and both of them pour the other another cup of tea.

After the third cup and another few snippets of conversation, questions about the Broken Isles and the enemies he's faced, a story from his time in Azsuna, both of them eye the door. They look back at one another and without another word they stand and clear their cups from the table. He grabs the cutters from their place on the shelf beside the lantern and she takes her black funeral shawl from a box beneath her bed. Together they make for the door and he holds it open for her as they exit and hands her the clippers. It's become so routine after so many years, the ways in which they honor his father, that he hardly notices himself handing them to her.

Outside they each choose three flowers from the yard. As always she picks peacebloom, silversage, and goldthorn. When she hands the clippers back to him he goes straight for the steelbloom and sungrass, but stops himself when he gets to the dreamfoil. This year is different and so he takes hold of the purple Arthas' Tear beside the doorstep and cuts it at the stem before handing his bundle of flowers to his mother. She looks to the flowers and then to her son and there is a wistfulness to her expression that makes him bite back tears.

Together they walk to the back of the house and he takes extra care not to trample the flowers as they leave the path. Sitting surrounded by vines and flowers was a silvery headstone, moss filling in the grooves on the stone that made up the letters in his father's name. Together they knelt beside it, both quiet in prayer for a moment, but Giizheg's mind racing.

 _It's time…_

"Mother…" he whispers " _Minn'da_ do you remember how Father died?" He cannot bring himself to look at her.

But he can feel her yellow gaze on him. "Of course. You said Vokuro slew him while he was under the control of the Lich King… Giizheg, what is this about? Did you think I had forgotten?"

He didn't dare reply, afraid he might vomit, even though it hurt him to leave her there to wonder. The silence that sat between them was thick and sickening in his throat, a lump he couldn't swallow as he trembled.

"Giizheg, look at me." A bony hand gripped his chin as though he were a child when he failed to comply. "I said _look at me._ "

He did, and his tears fell onto her cold fingers like molten rain, hot and slow as they rolled down his cheeks. "I have lied to you..." He could scarcely speak through the sorrow in his throat, sobs threatening to burst through to the surface. "I have deceived you for so long. Vokuro did not kill Father."

She let go of him and he hated the look of hurt that overtook her gaunt features. "What are you talking about? What is the matter with you?" When he failed to reply she finally snapped. "Answer me! Do not leave me in the dark. I have been in the dark for so long, in this place, _in this state_ … After all I've endured, I deserve to know the truth!"

And finally, long overdue honesty fell from his lips as he confessed to her the truth. " _It was me."_


End file.
